"I mean that Vernon chap," said Miss Voscoe down-rightly. "I told you to change partners every now and then. But with you it's that Vernon this week and last week and the week after next."

"I've known him longer than I have the others, and I like him," said Betty.

"Oh, he's all right; fine and dandy!" replied Miss Voscoe. "He's a big man, too, in his own line. Not the kind you expect to see knocking about at a students' cremerie. Does he give you lessons?"

"He did at home," said Betty.

"Take care he doesn't teach you what's the easiest thing in creation to learn about a man."

"What's that?" Betty did not like to have to ask the question.

"Why, how not to be able to do without him, of course," said Miss Voscoe.

"You're quite mistaken," said Betty eagerly: "one of the reasons I don't mind going about with him so much is that he's engaged to be married."

"Acquainted with the lady?"

"Yes," said Betty, sheltering behind the convention that an introduction at a tea-party const.i.tutes acquaintanceship. She was glad Miss Voscoe had not asked her if she _knew_ Lady St. Craye.

"Oh, well"--Miss Voscoe jumped up and shook the flakes of pastry off her pinafore--"if she doesn't mind, I guess I've got no call to. But why don't you give that saint in the go-to-h.e.l.l collar a turn?"

"Meaning?"

"Mr. Temple. He admires you no end. He'd be always in your pocket if you'd let him. He's worth fifty of the other man _as_ a man, if he isn't as an artist. I keep my eyes skinned--and the Sketch Club gives me a chance to tot them both up. I guess I can size up a man some. The other man isn't _fast_. That's how it strikes me."

"Fast?" echoed Betty, bewildered.

"Fast dye: fast colour. I suspicion he'd go wrong a bit in the wash.

Temple's fast colour, warranted not to run."

"I know," said Betty, "but I don't care for the colour, and I'm rather tired of the pattern."

"I wish you'd tell me which of the two was the three-polite-word man."

"I know you do. But surely you see _now_?"

"You're too cute. Just as likely it's the Temple one, and that's why you're so sick of the pattern by now."

"Didn't I tell you you were clever?" laughed Betty.

But, all the same, next evening when Vernon called to take her to dinner, she said:

"Couldn't we go somewhere else? I'm tired of Garnier's."

Vernon was tired of Garnier's, too.

"Do you know Thirion's?" he said. "Thirion's in the Boulevard St.

Germain, Thirion's where Du Maurier used to go, and Thackeray, and all sorts of celebrated people; and where the host treats you like a friend, and the waiter like a brother?"

"I should love to be treated like a waiter's brother. Do let's go,"

said Betty.

"He's a dream of a waiter," Vernon went on as they turned down the lighted slope of the Rue de Rennes, "has a voice like a trumpet, and takes a pride in calling twenty orders down the speaking-tube in one breath, ending up with a shout. He never makes a mistake either. Shall we walk, or take the tram, or a carriage?"

The Fate who was amusing herself by playing with Betty's destiny had sent Temple to call on Lady St. Craye that afternoon, and Lady St.

Craye had seemed bored, so bored that she had hardly appeared to listen to Temple's talk, which, duly directed by her quite early into the channel she desired for it, flowed in a constant stream over the name, the history, the work, the personality of Vernon. When at last the stream ebbed Lady St. Craye made a pretty feint of stifling a yawn.

"Oh, how horrid I am!" she cried with instant penitence, "and how very rude you will think me! I think I have the blues to-day, or, to be more French and more poetic, the black b.u.t.terflies. It _is_ so sweet of you to have let me talk to you. I know I've been as stupid as an owl. Won't you stay and dine with me? I'll promise to cheer up if you will."

Mr. Temple would, more than gladly.

"Or no," Lady St. Craye went on, "that'll be dull for you, and perhaps even for me if I begin to think I'm boring you. Couldn't we do something desperate--dine at a Latin Quarter restaurant for instance?

What was that place you were telling me of, where the waiter has a wonderful voice and makes the orders he shouts down the tube sound like the recitative of the ba.s.so at the Opera."

"Thirion's," said Temple; "but it wasn't I, it was Vernon."

"Thirion's, that's it!" Lady St. Craye broke in before Vernon's name left his lips. "Would you like to take me there to dine, Mr. Temple?"

It appeared that Mr. Temple would like it of all things.

"Then I'll go and put on my hat," said she and trailed her sea-green tea-gown across the room. At the door she turned to say: "It will be fun, won't it?"--and to laugh delightedly, like a child who is promised a treat.

That was how it happened that Lady St. Craye, brushing her dark furs against the wall of Thirion's staircase, came, followed by Temple, into the room where Betty and Vernon, their heads rather close together, were discussing the menu.

This was what Lady St. Craye had thought of more than a little. Yet it was not what she had expected. Vernon, perhaps, yes: or the girl. But not Vernon and the girl together. Not now. At her very first visit. It was not for a second that she hesitated. Temple had not even had time to see who it was to whom she spoke before she had walked over to the two, and greeted them.

"How perfectly delightful!" she said. "Miss Desmond, I've been meaning to call on you, but it's been so cold, and I've been so cross, I've called on n.o.body. Ah, Mr. Vernon, you too?"

She looked at the vacant chair near his, and Vernon had to say:

"You'll join us, of course?"

So the two little parties made one party, and one of the party was angry and annoyed, and no one of the party was quite pleased, and all four concealed what they felt, and affected what they did not feel, with as much of the tact of the truly well-bred as each could call up.

In this polite exercise Lady St. Craye was easily first.

She was charming to Temple, she was very nice to Betty, and she spoke to Vernon with a delicate, subtle, faint suggestion of proprietorship in her tone. At least that was how it seemed to Betty. To Temple it seemed that she was tacitly apologising to an old friend for having involuntarily broken up a dinner a deux. To Vernon her tone seemed to spell out an all but overmastering jealousy proudly overmastered. All that pretty fiction of there being now no possibility of sentiment between him and her flickered down and died. And with it the interest that he had felt in her. "_She_ have unexplored reserves? Bah!" he told himself, "she is just like the rest." He felt that she had not come from the other side of the river just to dine with Temple. He knew she had been looking for him. And the temptation a.s.sailed him to reward her tender anxiety by devoting himself wholly to Betty. Then he remembered what he had let Betty believe, as to the relations in which he stood to this other woman.

His face lighted up with a smile of answering tenderness. Without neglecting Betty he seemed to lay the real homage of his heart at the feet of that heart's lady.

"By Jove," he thought, as the dark, beautiful eyes met his in a look of more tenderness than he had seen in them this many a day, "if only she knew how she's playing my game for me!"

Betty, for her part, refused to recognise a little pain that gnawed at her heart and stole all taste from the best dishes of Thirion's. She talked as much as possible to Temple, because it was the proper thing to do, she told herself, and she talked very badly. Lady St. Craye was transfigured by Vernon's unexpected acceptance of her delicate advances, intoxicated by the sudden flutter of a dream she had only known with wings in full flight, into the region where dreams, clasped to the heart, become realities. She grew momently more beautiful. The host, going from table to table, talking easily to his guests, could not keep his fascinated eyes from her face. The proprietor of Thirion's had good taste, and knew a beautiful woman when he saw her.

Betty's eyes, too, strayed more and more often from her plate, and from Temple to the efflorescence of this new beauty-light. She felt mean and poor, ill-dressed, shabby, dowdy, dull, weary and uninteresting. Her face felt tired. It was an effort to smile.

When the dinner was over she said abruptly:

"If you'll excuse me--I've got a dreadful headache--no, I don't want anyone to see me home. Just put me in a carriage."